Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash Read Free Page A

the meaning of the [biblical] text in question. The first class strives and fights with a view to proving, as they deem, the correctness of the Midrashim and to defending them, and think this is the true meaning of the [biblical] text and that the Midrashim have the same status as the traditional legal decisions. But neither of the two groups understands that [the Midrashim] have the character of poetical conceits whose meaning is not obscure for someone endowed with understanding. At that time this method was generally known and used by everybody, just as the poets use poetical expressions. 4
    In a sequel to the quoted text, Maimonides refers to a particular midrash as "a most witty poetical conceit by means of which he instills a noble moral quality.'' The Rambam claims here that in order to understand the aggada, we must first have an appropriate conception of its genre. And indeed, the initial question that must be asked in order to say anything about midrash is the question of genre. What type of discourse is it that we are encountering? Is midrash hermeneutic, homiletic; or perhaps fiction? After rejecting views that propose that aggada is commentary—either bad or good—Maimonides argues that it is poetry—i.e., didactic fiction.

    Heinemann's reading of this text in the Rambam is remarkable. It forms, in fact, almost an allegory in which each of the three terms of Maimonides' taxonomy of
    readers of the midrash are projected onto three strains in the interpretation of aggada in the Wissenschaft Des Judentums . Thus, Rambam's first category is described as those "who depend on the fact that the drashot which turn from the plain sense are not entirely without scientific value" [p. 2]. This class of readers of the aggada is then identified by Heinemann with such interpreters as Umberto Cassuto and Benno Jacob, just to take the most well known of them today, who support the
    midrashic understanding either from context and literary analysis or by showing that it is a survival of ancient Near Eastern literature and therefore a true representation of the intertext of the Bible. (This last, is, of course, my formulation.) In addition, Heinemann includes in this group all those who read the midrash as a response to genuine exegetic difficulty in the Torah's text. The second category of the Rambam, that is, those who "find that the [aggada] cannot be reconciled with the words quoted, and therefore reject and ridicule it," is represented in Heinemann's pesher by none other than the young Abraham Geiger, who wrote that the rabbis manifested a " höchst getrübter exegetischer Sinn ." 5 The third category of the Rambam, that is, the Rambam himself, is filled in the Wissenschaft by Nahman Krochmal (Ranak), who indeed does seem to have made that identification himself, as the title of his masterwork, A Guide to the Perplexed of Our Time , indicated quite poignantly.

    Against each of these three types of readers, Heinemann presents what he clearly takes to be fatal objections. Thus against the Orthodox school 6 he argues that they fail to see the woods for the trees. Although on occasion we may be able to use their interpretation of the aggada as a response to exegetical difficulty in the biblical text or as an echo of ancient knowledge, there are many cases where we surely cannot. Moreover, Heinemann argues, the rabbis themselves made a distinction between peshat [plain sense] and drash , so we cannot claim that also in the drash they intended simply to provide the "true, scientific" interpretation of the text. 7 Against the Reform school he only needs cite Yehuda Halevi's attack on Karaism, claiming that the same rabbis who were perfectly capable of interpreting the Mishna correctly ought to have been able to do so with regard to the Bible as well, and therefore, if they did not, it
    must be because they chose not to and not because they could not. Against the Conservative view of Ranak (who is, however, forgotten here), he